Now that our gardens are established and we’ve moved in and gotten comfortable on the new homestead, we’re back to experimenting with terra preta. Our previous terra preta experiment came to an end due to our move; however, we get quite a few comments asking for updates on how it went.
I can’t say, since we no longer have access to that property. Yet we can start again.
And we’re starting now, since few things came together at once for us.
First, a local restaurant said we could have all their chicken waste, which is mostly leg bones. We’re getting about 12 trays of chicken parts a week right now.
Second, my friend James brought over his backhoe to level the ground for our new greenhouse, then used it to dig us a big new biochar burning trench.
Third, the weather is cooling off and fires are fun again. 100-degree days are just miserable!
What’s Missing
We currently need lots of pottery fragments to complete our mix. We may also have to create a humanure composting toilet system again in order to completely recreate the ancient “waste site” properly. We’ll also need more clay, as the Amazonian terra preta sites were built in clay, not sandy, soil. Finally, we’ll throw in some vegetable waste as well, as well as some forest duff.
We filmed a video of our new burning setup yesterday and will probably post that tomorrow.
The remnants of a burn really are impressive:
Even if we don’t manage to recreate terra preta, we will have lots of good minerals ending up in the garden.
Have a great Tuesday.
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Today’s music:
16 comments
Looking forward to seeing the results!
I don’t know if you have seen the recent report on contrasting anthropological sites with tera preta and current indigenous sites which are actively cultivating tera preta in the Southern Amazon regions.
In the link is below, the Ethnographic Observations and Discussion sections have a lot of the condensed information. As usual the rest is discussion of methods, findings and structure of the inquiry.
I find in fascinating. I was taught in some environmental science courses that it is impossible to create topsoil, and that never sat well with me.
Intentional creation of carbon-rich dark earth soils in the Amazon
https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/sciadv.adh8499
This is excellent! I missed this one. Cassava waste is another thing I need to add, now!
“impossible to recreate topsoil” bothers me too. It is there, it was created through a process of nature, it can be recreated.
I have found scientist are often wrong about their estimated measurements of time.
They’ll say society has only existed for x amount of time, but they cant explain why so much evidence contradicts that. They say it would take x amount of time to create new soil, I guarantee they are way overestimating time and underestimating nature.
That phrase bothers me also. I can only presume that “scientists” would say this because they don’t want you to discover you can recreate topsoil and to follow their narrative/agenda, whatever that may be.
To be charitable, a lot of the people in the “environmental science / resource management” world have the idea that there is something like untouched nature that it is somehow better than a garden full of stuff to eat, and that carrying capacity is an absolute.
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I suspect a lot of them don’t garden.
I agree. There is a super-nazi thing going on with the native plant people, though. It’s insane.
David, that music was absolutely beautiful. Thank you!
As a scientist, specifically with a background in quality control, I can confirm that scientists often overestimate their own knowledge, especially those with a Ph.D. If they don’t know, they may tell you it can’t be done. But that doesn’t mean they are correct! Ask why. Sometimes they know what they are talking about and sometimes they don’t, just like the rest of us mortals.
I have overreached my own knowledge as well. Just the other night I was corrected on something by a woman who had done much more research on a topic. “Sorry…” she said, realizing she had just run me over. I thanked her, though – she had given me an entirely new view on the event!
You might make something better than terra preta. The ancient amazonians made the best soil they could with the resources they had. We have more resources. Azomite, greensand, kelp meal, saltwater fish etc.
That is true – what a thought!
I have thinking of roasting spent cat litter to use in terra preta. Solves 3 things. Baked clay, killing infectious organisms adds animal water
Good idea.
I’m going to be distributing my swamp water sludge into my greenhouse rows and throwing in more broken terracotta pots as well as pure charcoal in there. The frustrations of being in the suburbs are great, it must be ‘pretty’ around here as I need to not get on anyone’s radar.
We see a lot of homesteading channels that go dig a pit or toss their meat Bird remains into a compost pile; throwing stuff into a fire pit might be a good and possibly more productive way of honouring the animal that sustains you. I’m looking forward to this experiment playing out!
That is a good idea, Rosa.